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Monday, 10:23 pm, 06 December 2004 Two Log entries in one evening? When I wrote the last Log entry I was a little perturbed. eBay getting me down. Not eBay as a whole, but the 1% of problem eBayers. I think to myself why am I wasting my time with this nonsense. Only occasionally. But it does happen. I let this minor nuisance stop me from sending props to DJ Static for playing my Funkdoobiest request on WeFunk. Rather than just linking to the request being played. Onto the main event... I sent myself an email today with just a subject line. It read; Isolation - It's a Mentality - Not a Location This is a two pronged - or perhaps two referenced idea. One part came through Justin Hall's narrative on interface design at a mobile phone game convention. Actually I don't even think it was a convention. It was some kind of paid-for let's pick the same brains once again. I looked at Justin's film somewhat jaded. I remember in the mid-1990s watching films featuring Doug Rushkoff and co, talking about VR technology and VR lifestyles. These moved on to web documentaries etc. The same people, saying the same things, over and over again. It didn't map onto my development reality then. It doesn't map onto my development reality now. (Of course, for a brief time, the two did meet.) The commercial games industry is Hollywood. Its the same companies. The model for commercial games development is VCR/DVD. Single purchase. Imagine if a film was versioned. I am getting an update for Shine featuring the story from when the Shine v1.0 ended, until now. It's Shine v1.1. Not going to happen. The beauty of software is the update. It's the continuos organic nature of software. Modern games aren't there. The second part is my frustration with living in the UK. Not the same level as living in Australia. I had a nightmare late last month about living in Australia. The frustration I had in Australia - the far right, the total alienation between me and the Australian alpha male. The sense of complete hopelessness. In contrast with the UK - here it's just complete social isolation outside working hours. The British keep to themselves and it's boring. In Australia, through a working environment, it would be impossible to go for a year without going to dinner with your work mates at least four times. Regularly going out for Friday drinks etc. In addition, you would have a relatively fluid group of friends to meet with. I thought I was socially isolated in Australia. In contrast, aside from email, it is just me and my wife. I have written recently about finding a gaming club. About creating an army and meeting on a regular basis with a group of players, if nothing more to emulate what my wife's computer is currently failing to do. To create a strategic simulation that will take about two to three hours of my time. Human interaction and strategy. I thought this would be a trivial exercise in the UK. It hasn't been trivial at all. If I lived in a major city centre perhaps. But not whitebread Wilmslow. So isolation in developing software terms. If no-one is referencing your work and your not referencing the work of others, you could be smack in the heart of Silicon Valley - as I was - and still be in technological isolation. In social terms, you could be surrounded by houses and people but still be isolated through lack of interaction with the insular population. Something has to change. Good night. Monday, 08:35 pm, 06 December 2004 Commission Mission You may wonder what a work-in-progress paint-job from multiple Golden Demon and Slayer Sword winner, Chris Blair would look like. From my latest commission, Chris sent me the following snap.  For the first time in recorded history, I have no commissions with Fred Reed. I am working through an army list or two as a series of formal commissions. Fred and I exchanged shocked emails - could there be no Barbalet commission work currently? The WeFunkDoobiest I was listening to last week's WeFunk show and I heard my Funkdoobiest request played. I captured a minute of WeFunk off the CKUT radio archive server. It was far smaller a sample in kbytes than I could ever make from the audio. Good night. Sunday, 08:47 pm, 05 December 2004 Dark Futures We watched I, Robot today. Half way through I started reading the newspaper. Heavy handed and emphasis on cumbersome dialog over themes. In contrast, my favourite of the genre is AI. The 'Teddy' bear in AI was an idea materialised. The cognitive simulation in the Noble Ape Simulation is about four years of solid development away from 'Teddy'. Of course, in Noble Ape Simulation timescales multiple by ten. I, Robot was a Hollywood cliche wrapped around three concepts from a book. Disappointing. Cognition and Chaos As the weekend comes to an end, I reflect on a weekend of more theory than action. Working through the CHUD modifications, I have aimed for only the optimisation on the cognitive processing code which is a little less than the Apple CHUD implementation, but it provides the best of the existing Simulation and Apple's Velocity Engine optimisations. In contrast to the cognitive simulation, I have also been reading a lot about Warhammer rules versus armies. My plan for the new year is to travel to a gaming club and actually play the game rather than collecting the miniatures. The social aspects of gaming is an unknown. The issue is distance and comfort. The closest club is about seven miles away. There is no direct train route. My preference is to find a club on the train route. More on this over the next month. Good night. Saturday, 07:40 pm, 04 December 2004 Another month and a clean slate to write on. Many bits of news over the past few days. In no real order, the diversity of things I write about on this site gets a number of search links. This evening I would like to write about two of the most popular searches that lead to Barbalet's Log. More Canada/Cheshire Get-Down News... The first is Nomadic Massive - the Montreal crew featuring WeFunk's DJ Static and Butta Beats. The Canada/Cuba CD is a favourite of mine. I was contacted by the group's webmaster. They will have a launch for the new site in the near future. In the interim, they have a placer site; http://www.nomadicmassive.ca/ Tammy Haye MIA - For Some... I also get a lot of searches for information on Tammy Haye. For a number of months I have added Tammy Haye MIA updates. The last correspondence I have from her on CMON; From: t_haye2 Received: 9th November 04 Subject re: Chaos Three hi tom, I'm sorry for the lack of replies, but my email has been a bit dead...lovely ntl i've got images for you tomorrow, but i've ad a little accident...(you're gonna kill me). When cleaning my desk, i think i might have tipped the chaos warrior with rocket launcher in the bin... now, i'm on the hunt for a new one, and have painted a similar model form the same range for you which you can have for free. When I find the actual model, i'll paint that one free of charge too, to apologise for the goof up) i'm so disorganized lately, with packing for the move, sorting out my trip to amsterdam for chrsitmas, actually renting vans, asking friends to help move, looking for work and a place to live etc etc..I'm not very stress resistant unfortunately. anyway, pictures tomorrow, and I hope you're not too mad at me... Tammy seems to be on CMON quite a bit. But no photos and no response to my replies on CMON. Onto the main event. Constants of Cool What makes a weekly program viewable or listenable. I wonder this with the Simpsons. It is not that every show is stunning. In fact, a number of the episodes are just watchable. Similarly I am a fan of WeFunk, but Groove and Static have occasional bad shows too. It's the good shows that you remember. My WeFunk Show library has about fifteen favourites of eighty. Using this fraction, with about twenty remaining shows I listen to occasionally. The magic fractions of cool seem to be about 20 percent stunning and an additional 20-25 percent viewable. Less than you might think for loyalty. But I find myself remembering the good over the bad, and in particular remembering particularly good moments. CHUD - Noble Ape CDROMs into the Future I wrote last month about using the G5. An interesting foot note to this is that Apple distributes the Noble Ape Simulation with their CHUD tools. Their CHUD tools are available on the G5 intallation CDROMs. I assume also the G4 CDROMs too. The source code Apple distributes is circa 2003. Quite old and virtually unrecognisable when compared with the modern Simulation. I think it will be relatively simple to add the Apple optimised brain code to the existing Simulation. The existing Simulation already has a threading model based-on but developed separately from the Apple submitted threading code. All very academic. I suspect. But a project to keep me busy through the low-light months. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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